“Follow me,” he says. “And arm yourselves.”

We push into the fray inside the building, and everything is chaos. Many of the Fellians are wearing the bright red scarves over their horns, and they battle with others with bare heads and fight on the ground, their wings tightly protected behind them. The human women surge through the halls, destroying everything they can reach and shouting obscenities I’ve never heard coming out of women’s mouths. I don’t blame them, though. I’d be mad as shite too if I’d been enslaved. They attack everything with a vicious enthusiasm that tells me they’re avenging more than themselves. They fight for the memory of every person that was destroyed in Lionel’s awful war and the Fellian vengeance that followed.

Even if they free themselves, we haven’t won. No one wins in any of this. We’re all coming out of this battered and shaken, the world far more grim than it was two years ago.

Me, I just want Nemeth back. Even if I have to spend the next five years back in the tower again, I’d do so gratefully. I just want him whole and well. I want to talk to him and understand the machinations behind what he did. I want to hold him close and know that we’re all right.

But as Erynne, my once-gentle sister attacks a guard with a wild, vicious light in her eyes, two other human women spattered with blood at her side, I wonder if anything will be all right ever again.

“Over here,” Riza calls to the Fellian pulling my cart through the madness. She points at a side door, and he shoves his way forward, the cart rattling as he pushes fighters aside—both Fellian and human—with his shield.

The cart rocks and I let out a yelp, only to have Riza come to my side. She grabs a short sword from the bundle of weapons I’m clutching and uses it to stab at a Fellian hand that grabs at the cart. I cry out again as she chops at the Fellian’s hand as if it were a vegetable and not attached to a person. Hot blood splashes my face and I flinch backward.

Our guard moves away from the front of the cart and sinks his axe into the back of the Fellian attacking us, then kicks his corpse away as I stare.

“We can’t let anyone stop us, my lady,” Riza says in a hard voice, kicking at the dead man. “If we stop now, you’re dead. Understand? We won’t be able to carry you out. Not in this mob.”

I swallow hard, looking around. It’s madness everywhere, but no Fellian is using his wings or teleporting. Those things must be too dangerous. I nod at Riza. She’s seen too much of war and I haven’t seen enough, perhaps.

The guard straightens our cart again and then hauls it down the side hall, surging forward until we come to another door, and then a staircase heading down. “The dungeons,” is all he says. “Now I must rejoin the fight.”

“Thank you, Raxus,” Riza says in a sharp voice. “If you see Tolian, tell him to be careful.”

He grins, showing the tusk-like teeth of the Fellian men, and adjusts his shield and axe, then runs down the hall back towards the chaos.

Riza studies me, pulling out another weapon, a dagger. “Can you walk?”

No, I want to complain. My legs still feel shaky and weak, and I’m pretty sure my toes remain numb despite everything. But if Nemeth is in the dungeon, that’s where I need to be. “Aye.”

It takes far too long to get to my feet, but I manage. Weaving unsteadily, I take the blade she offers me and tuck it between my breasts, like I used to with my enchanted dagger. It doesn’t want to remain in place, thanks to my filmy Fellian-make dress, so I hook the crossguard on the neckline of my dress and wrap my shawl tightly around my shoulders, winding it twice so I won’t have to hold it in place. Just those small tasks make me feel utterly exhausted, but I force myself to stand straight.

Riza nods at me and heads down the stairs, her blade in hand.

I follow behind her. The stairs wind down, narrow and circular, and it’s pitch black inside. It reminds me of my days in the tower when I was desperately preserving wood and matches for fire. I lean heavily against the inside wall, my hand pressed to the stone to guide me, and I move down slowly, counting steps.

When we get to twenty-three, there are no more steps. Riza grabs my arm, and I hear the rustle of her clothing. “I’ll find a lamp of some kind. Wait here.”

She moves away and I wait in the darkness, my eyes closed. Again, I’m reminded of my time in the tower, and as I hear Riza’s clothing rustling as she searches for a light, I think of all the times I got by with nothing. I think of how I recognized Nemeth by the sound of his wings as he moved, and the heft of his steps upon the floor. Can I find him now?

I take a step forward, and my slipper-covered feet encounter straw on the stone floor. Rushes, I realize. Rushes that are meant to keep the floor warm and somewhat clean. The straw here smells moldy when I step forward, though, and something drips on me from above. It’s cold and wet and damp in here, and I think of Nemeth and how much he’d hate it here. He loves a warm fire.

A light flares somewhere behind me and Riza sighs with relief. “There we go.”

The dungeon is horrifying. It’s far more cramped than the rest of the rooms above, with multiple doors clustered tightly in a row, all of them seemingly too small for the large Fellians and their wings. I suppose that’s part of the punishment, but I shiver at the sight. Each door has only a small hole to look inside, and these dungeons seem far worse than the ones I was kept in. More than that, it’s foully dark down here, the ceiling low and oppressive and the walls damp. Between that and the gross straw, I want nothing more than to leave.

But if Nemeth is down here…

I stagger towards the first cell. It’s small, no bigger than a garderobe. Riza shines a light into it and shakes her head. “Empty.”

I peer inside just in case, but she’s right. I don’t see anyone inside. “How does one keep a Fellian prisoner if they can slide through shadows?” I ask her, trying to distract from the fact that I’m near to collapsing with exhaustion. “Won’t they just leave?”

“Magic,” Riza says. “Everything is always magic with Fellians. Tolian told me that the king’s dungeon is enchanted so that all magic is nullified down here. No one can teleport in, no one can teleport out.”

Makes sense, even if it makes things harder.

Riza shines her light into the next cell, and then shudders. “That one is dead. Recent, too.”

“How recent?” My voice is hoarse with terror. Before she can answer, I peek inside, because I’m unable to stand it. There’s a dead Fellian all right, curled up on the ground, his limbs twisted. An ugly dark rash covers his chest and face, but it’s not Nemeth.

I bite my lip, because I saw that rash on another dead man. That’s the plague. It’s not safe for him to be down here. We have to get him out, and soon.

Riza surges ahead and I follow after her. Most of the cells are empty, though a few have dead men—all Fellians—inside them. I’m horrified that the dead have been left to rot down here, forgotten, but I think of Ivornath’s body above and wonder if that’s Meryliese’s awful doing. I hate her more with every moment that passes.

If we’re lucky, Erynne will find her and stab her once or twice or twelve times and save me the effort of killing her myself.

In the second to the last cell, there’s a large Fellian with his back to the small viewing hole in the door. His wings are wrapped tightly around himself, as if he’s using them as a blanket, and his entire body quakes.

“Nemeth?” I call, my heart racing.

No answer. Whoever’s in the cell can’t hear me, either by magic or by the fever that has him trapped.

“Is that him?” Riza asks. “Can you tell?”

I open my mouth to speak, when the figure turns slightly, and a long, ragged scar is revealed on one wing. A whimper of agony escapes me. It’s Nemeth all right, and he’s sick with the plague. “Oh gods, we have to get him out of there, Riza.”